Volume 2: Living with Ghosts Chapter 015 Mission Difficulty
Wang Lin's encouragement reminded Zhang Fengyu of his parents who still lived in that thatched house and worked hard for his annual tuition. Zhang Fengyu's face, which had become almost distorted because of his efforts to suppress fear, also became a little more relaxed when he thought of his parents far away in his hometown.
People always say that when they encounter difficulties, the first person they think of is their parents. Only when you become a parent yourself, you will truly understand the difficulties of your parents. When you are confused about the future, you will feel the deep expectations and guilt for your parents.
Zhang Fengyu missed his parents, he really missed them.
While other children are working hard for their future and striving for their parents to live a good life, he is here enduring the erosion of fear and facing a tomorrow without a tomorrow.
His parents raised him with great difficulty and never set any goals for him. He clearly remembered what his father said to him when he left home to study: "Xiaoyu, it's a pity that such a good child like you was born into a poor family like ours. Take care of yourself outside. Your mother and I can still work. If you need anything, just tell us. The city is not like this village. We will try our best to satisfy you so that outsiders will not look down on you!"
Zhang Fengyu didn't agree with this at the time, thinking that this is how parents should treat their children. But now he knows how wrong he was.
Zhang Fengyu's family was not wealthy, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that they lived in poverty. His parents were illiterate farmers, and the family lived in a poor countryside. Their daily needs were also maintained by the one-third acre of land at home.
Because people there were poor, Zhang Fengyu didn't feel anything when he was a child, but as he grew up and went to school in the town, he realized the gap between him and the children in the town. It was also at this time that he began to feel inferior.
Zhang Fengyu went to the town to attend junior high school or even high school. The old couple could barely make ends meet with this small piece of land. Although this kind of life was hard, it was not a burden. After all, Zhang Fengyu's grades were relatively good, so the town would give him some subsidies.
However, this kind of life only lasted until Zhang Fengyu was admitted to university.
The high tuition fee placed a heavy burden on their already poor family. A tuition fee of several thousand yuan was not actually much, but for their self-sufficient family, it was already an astronomical figure, and they simply could not come up with so much money in one go.
But the couple's children's schooling was a big deal, and they couldn't afford to take it lightly. In order to raise money for Zhang Fengyu's college tuition, the couple even took out all their savings that they had originally reserved for retirement. They even sold the land that they had guarded and cultivated for their entire lives, and exchanged it for Zhang Fengyu's living expenses during school.
The savings and land were gone, and now his parents could only make a living by farming for others, and their lives became even more difficult. Zhang Fengyu thought about his past and felt that he had lived in vain for the word "human"! Before this, he almost never cared about his parents' feelings, and even said that he had never felt the hard work and difficulties of his parents.
Not only that, he was also very resentful because of his poor family. He always ranked first in the exams, and got A+ in all the competitions except English. However, these outstanding achievements that made his classmates envious could not bring him any material satisfaction, but instead a sense of inferiority day after day. Every time Zhang Fengyu thought about this, he would be unwilling to think about why he was born in such a poor family!
This resentful thought became even worse after he came to a certain university. Looking at his miserable 400 yuan monthly living expenses and the gap of more than 3,000 yuan between him and his roommates, Zhang Fengyu's resentment and inferiority became even stronger.
He hated his fate, and hated this dirty and dark society full of abuse of power for personal gain! In their dormitory, except for Zhao Jinglan, all the others entered this top university through special channels and with the help of money.
As Hong Bo often said, "I came here just to get a diploma, mainly to look good, but it doesn't have much practical use. Even if I only graduated from elementary school, my family's company will belong to me in the future!"
It can be said that every word of Hong Bo's words hurt his body and mind.
He studied hard for many years, but his wealth was not as good as a stack of money. Even if a child from a poor family is well-educated, he still has to go through a lot of hardships to succeed, but these people can just sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
The future is determined from birth.
From then on, Zhang Fengyu asked his parents to increase the monthly living expenses for him. He didn't want to live such a frugal life anymore, at least not now! Therefore, he started to hang out with Hong Bo and others and started to live a life of hustling.
It can be said that Zhang Fengyu at that time was almost psychologically distorted, and his thoughts had reached an extreme. It was also during this period that he became addicted to horror movies.
Watching horror movies can bring him unexpected stimulation, not only stimulating his senses, but also stimulating his psychology. It can make him forget his worries, his unhappiness, his parents who are toiling away in his hometown, and the injustice he feels about fate.
Compared to those protagonists in horror movies who can neither live nor die and can only live in fear every day, he is undoubtedly better off than these people. It was precisely because of this distorted contrast that Zhang Fengyu found what he called balance at the time.
But fate really likes to play jokes. As time goes by, who would have thought that he is now worse off than those people in horror movies. He also lives in fear, but compared to those fake movies and TV shows, what he faces is real terror and oppression!
Zhang Fengyu regrets it now, very much.
He thought of the kindness of his parents and the difficulties they had gone through. He felt guilty and missed his parents, as well as felt remorse and unwillingness in his heart!
He really wanted to leave here, leave this damn place, go home, go back to his parents...
Thinking of so many things in an instant also dispersed all the fear that originally existed in Zhang Fengyu's heart. The strong feeling of fear just now had disappeared at this moment, but it was replaced by sadness and heartache.
Zhang Fengyu covered his face and turned his body to the side, facing his back to everyone. He didn't want outsiders to see his vulnerable side, and even more so, he didn't want outsiders to see his tears.
When Zhang Fengyu turned around, everyone felt a little bitter. Each of them had experienced a change in their thoughts and mentality. Similarly, each of them had regrets and guilt towards their family and even friends...
Seeing that Zhang Fengyu had overcome this hurdle, Wang Lin looked at Zhang Fengyu with appreciation, then retracted his gaze, and a hint of seriousness emerged on his originally calm face.
"From the prompts, this mission should be classified as a comprehensive one. However, although it can be classified as a comprehensive one, it is obviously different from the missions we have experienced before. We were forcibly divided into two groups of men and women to carry out the mission. Not only have we never encountered this mode, but it also imposes great difficulties on us in terms of mission analysis. The dispersion of personnel means that there are fewer people analyzing the mission."
Wang Lin stopped talking here and set his eyes on Chen Ping. Then he interrupted Chen Ping's contemplation and asked, "Xiao Ping, now analyze the hint of this mission."
After hearing Wang Lin call his name, Chen Ping raised his head and nodded at Wang Lin indifferently. He then analyzed, “From the literal meaning of the prompt for this mission, it is not difficult to see that there are many possibilities. We have no way to predict the possibilities, so this is not our focus right now.
I will only talk about the difficulties I found through the task prompts. To sum up, there are two difficulties. The first is that the captain mentioned before that since we were divided into two groups of men and women, the number of analysts was reduced compared to the past, which may lead to insufficient . Everyone should also know that if there are not enough clues, it is easy to fall into the trap of the task.
The second place is the target range we are looking for. According to the prompt, the men's group goes to the women's village, and there are 100 people in the women's village. The women's group goes to the men's village, and there are 50 men. If we only look at these numbers, the scope of this mission can be said to be not large.
After all, ghosts will only hide among these people, and we now have four men and two women. According to this ratio, we are equivalent to one person looking for ghosts among 25 people. From the perspective of numbers alone, the range is indeed small, but if we look at it from a time perspective, then this range is too large. "
Everyone was listening attentively, and no one interrupted. It was not difficult to see Chen Ping's role among these people. He was obviously serving as a military advisor .
Perhaps because the next words were too long, Chen Ping paused for a moment before continuing, "From my analysis, there are several factors that make the scope of the task larger. First, the number of ghosts is not clearly stated in the hint. This undoubtedly increases the time it takes us to obtain clues. After all, the number of ghosts could be one, two... or even all ghosts. There are too many possibilities!
In addition, if we want to obtain clues, we will undoubtedly have to contact the people in the village. If the execution period of this mission is very long, then we can naturally do it. We can contact each woman or each man individually for a period of time, so as to feel the differences between them and find out the true identity of the ghost.
But in fact, the prompt gives a clear execution period, which is two months. It seems that two months is not a short time, but strictly speaking, it is only one month, because we have to make a choice within one month, and the remaining one month is an irreversible result.
During this month, we not only have to get along with everyone, but also marry people in the village. These two points alone have magnified the scope of this mission several times."
When Chen Ping talked about this, Li Xuan and Wang Lin both knew what Chen Ping meant and nodded to Chen Ping symbolically. But not everyone understood what Chen Ping meant. Yun Yun and Zhang Feng, who were sitting on the side, looked confused, and it was obvious that there were still many things they had not figured out.
However, Chen Ping obviously had no intention of explaining for the two of them. He coughed lightly and was about to continue. Seeing this, Zhang Feng quickly interrupted him and asked earnestly, "I didn't quite understand what you just said. There are obviously only a few men and women in the village. Why does the scope become larger when the execution period is added? What's going on?"
Chen Ping's face flashed with impatience, but when Wang Lin signaled him to explain again, Chen Ping replied to Zhang Feng's question and said, "Although the number of men and women in the village remains unchanged, we don't know the exact number of ghosts, so this is considered a variable. And the task prompt also stipulates that you must get married within a month. Just imagine, if we look at it from the perspective of flash marriage in our reality, getting married within a month may not be a difficult task.
But have you ever thought about this, what if the people in these two villages were all conservative people with ancient folk customs? Then just getting married within a month would be extremely difficult to do, let alone pursuing multiple people at the same time.
Like I said before, although we are the only one who has to identify ghosts among 25 people, judging from the execution period analysis given by the prompts, we simply don’t have that much time to contact everyone in the village one by one!
Of course, all of this is my guess. Whether the facts are really as I said remains to be verified. But if my guess is correct, then this mission will not give us time to collect clues. To put it bluntly, perhaps we can only gamble on our luck and randomly draw the winner! "
